old woman wove a blanket with a beautiful
pattern showing hornbills calling from the top
of a durian tree.
I was the first European woman to visit
the house, and everything I did excited curi
osity. Laughing, chattering throngs followed
me from room to room. As the afternoon
wore on, more Dyaks came home. Hunting
parties brought fresh-killed game. Women
arrived from the fields with baskets of vege
tables, and children with food for pigs.
Bathe Before You Enter
"Has it been raining?" I asked my servant.
"Everyone is dripping wet."
"They have just bathed," he answered.
"These people always do that in the evenings
before they come to the house."
The coterie of Dyak girls that constantly
seemed to surround me caught the gist of
the conversation. Twittering with apologetic
sounds, they bore me to the stream.
+ Some Work, Others Relax under the
Roof of a Kejaman Longhouse
Dwellers care little for privacy. Each longhouse
family has a partitioned sleeping chamber behind the
planked wall and a work space on the covered com
munal gallery at its doorstep. Beneath the house
pigs grunt, dogs bark, and fighting cocks quarrel.
Floor planks bear the marks of hand-hewing. House
holders in the foreground scrape the pithy heartwood
from sago palm logs (page 730). Most Borneo peo
ples eat starchy sago only when a rice crop fails.
+A Kejaman girl of the upper Rajang River coun
try enjoys a cigar made of local tobacco wrapped in
a banana leaf. Both men and women of her tribe
distend their ear lobes with heavy metal bangles.
715
Dyak, akin to Malay, which the servant I
had brought with me turned into the simple
market Malay I understood to some extent.
I suppose there were skulls grinning from
the shadows above us, but I chose not to
look up. As long as they obviously date from
the old days, they are perfectly legal and fig
ure in occasional Dyak ceremonies. I must
say, however, they are not my idea of proper
decorations for a jolly party.
After the feast I explored the house. Many
of the people, industrious as most Dyaks are,
were hard at work. One youth was making
a casting net, another a canoe paddle. An